George Clooney Wraps Production on Netflix Movie Now Titled ‘The Midnight Sky’
George Clooney has wrapped filming on a Netflix adaptation of the novel “Good Morning, Midnight” for Netflix, as confirmed by the streamer in a recent tweet. The movie is now titled “The Midnight Sky.” Because, no, it’s not that “Good Morning, Midnight,” a novel penned by Jean Rhys in the 1930s about an alcoholic forced by her enabling bestie to spend her dying days drying out in a Paris hostel. This is a science-fiction story, lifted from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2017 novel centered on Augustine (George Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to stop Sully (Felicity Jones) and her fellow astronauts from returning home to a mysterious global catastrophe.
David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, and Tiffany Boone co-star. Per Netflix, the film is set to be released later in 2020. The screenplay comes from “The Revenant” co-writer Mark L. Smith.
This is Clooney’s first return to directing feature films since 2017’s box-office flop “Suburbicon,” a sharp satire that featured Matt Damon and Julianne Moore as a suburb-dwelling couple driven to murderous extremes by their boredom amid picket fences and stifled ennui upon the arrival of an African-American family in their community.
Prior to “Suburbicon,” Clooney saw greater success as a director with Best Picture Academy Award nominee “Good Night, and Good Luck” in 2005. His political thriller “The Ides of March” earned a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination in 2012, but other results were mixed. Art-heist comedy “The Monuments Men” and football period piece “Leatherheads” didn’t go far in 2014 and 2008, respectively. Clooney has won Oscars for Best Supporting Actor for “Syriana,” and as a producer on Best Picture winner “Argo.”
Clooney also starred in — and directed two episodes for — the May 2019 Hulu series “Catch-22,” an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s classic World War II tome. He shared producing and directing duties with his Smokehouse Pictures partner Grant Heslov. Smokehouse also backs “The Midnight Sky.” The movie is about what’s left to do with your life at the end of the world, rooted in a sci-fi genre that Clooney has previously visited, in front of the camera, in films such as “Solaris” and “Tomorrowland.”
Though first announced last year, “The Midnight Sky” marks another auteur scoop from Netflix, which has already lured the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Damien Chazelle, Dee Rees, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Paul Greengrass, Noah Baumbach, Mati Diop, Angelina Jolie, Ava DuVernay… the list goes on, and on, and won’t be ending anytime soon.
That’s a wrap! THE MIDNIGHT SKY, from director and star George Clooney, is coming later this year. pic.twitter.com/51aMNjelF9
— Netflix Film (@NetflixFilm) February 21, 2020
